He stumbled away from the wall and went on again, shuffling, hurrying, pushing himself through the pain. The light before him grew brighter as he approached the hall, but the flashes were becoming shorter and shorter. Segnbora spoke of choosing when to listen to the voices of the dead — and when you can choose freely, and not be driven by them, you're free to find out who you really are—
And the voice spoke again in the back of his mind, saying, 'There's neither lying nor deception, back of the Door—'
He couldn't lie, Herewiss thought through the effort of making his body work. He was telling the truth. He was! I didn't—
He came to the doorway of the hall, and stood there, trembling with fear and effort, taking in the scene. There was little sound from the people in the hall now. They were crowded together in one corner, huddled together with closed or averted eyes. Before them stood Segnbora, arms upraised, shaking terribly, but with a look of final commitment on her face as she summoned the Flame from the depths of her, brilliant and impotent. As Herewiss watched, supporting himself on the bloody sword, she called the light out of herself again. But this time there was no starflower, no burst of blue: only a rather bright light, quickly gone.
In that light he could see the huge things she was holding off, as they backed away a bit. They reached out with twisted limbs, black talons raked the air like the combed claws of insects. Even through their banshee wail the sound of sheathed fangs moving hungrily in hidden mouths could still be heard. The light seemed to refuse to touch them, sliding away from hide the color of night with no stars — though there were baleful glitters from where their eyes could have been, reflections the color of gray-green stormlight on polished ice. The air in the room was bitter cold, and smelled of rust and acid.
The light flickered out, and the hralcins moved in again for their meal.
Herewiss staggered in, into the thick darkness. Well, maybe this was what he was for. The hralcins had come after him: he would give himself to them, and they would feed on his soul and go away, satisfied. His friends would escape. He found himself suddenly glad of those few precious moments with his brother, however painful they had been. After the hralcins were through with him, there would be nothing. No silent shore, no Sea of light, no rebirth ever; only terrible pain, and then the end of things. But if this was going to be the last expression of his existence, he would do it right. He drew himself up straight, though it hurt, and lifted up the sword. Almost he smiled: it was so good to face his fears at last—!
'Here I am, you sons of bitches!' he yelled. 'Come and get me!'
The howling paused for a moment, as if in confusion -and then, to Herewiss's utter horror, resumed again. They were not interested. They had found other game; they would take the souls of Freelorn and his people, and then later have Herewiss at their leisure.
'No,' he breathed. 'No—'
'Herewiss!' two voices cried at once, and there was the light again, but only a shadow of itself, pallid and exhausted. Segnbora held up her arms with fists clenched, as if she were trying to hold on to the light by main force, while her eyes searched the shadows for Herewiss. Freelorn stood apart from her, grim-faced and terrified. His sword was naked in his hand: a useless gesture, but one that described him in full. That man walked the land of the dead with me unafraid, Herewiss thought, and here he is facing down things that'll drink him up, blood and soul together, and he's afraid, and still he defies—!
The light died out, for the last time. The hralcins howled, and moved in—
The hall exploded into fire, an awful blaze of white-hot outrage.
Freelorn and Segnbora and the others crowded further back into the corner as Sunspark flowered between them and the hralcins, its fires raging upward in a terrible blinding column until they reached the ceiling and turned back on themselves, the down- hanging branches of a tree of flames. The hralcins backed away again.
'Sunspark,' Herewiss cried, the sound of his shout hurting his head. 'Spark, no, don't—'
The hralcins were already sliding closer again. (Herewiss,) it said, lashing out at them with great gouts of fire, (he loves you. And you love him, more than you do me, I dare say. How shall I stand by and allow him to be taken from you? And then afterwards these things would take you too—) Its thoughts were casual on the surface, almost humorous, but beneath them Herewiss could hear its terror for him.
'Spark—'
It went up in so unbearable a glare that Herewiss had to close his eyes, but before he did he saw that the hralcins were still moving closer. (They don't seem to be responding as well as before to this,) it said conversationally, while beneath the thought all its self sang with fear. (I think—)
There was a sudden shocked silence. Herewiss opened his eyes again to see one of the hralcins reach out and somehow tear the pillar of fire in two, hug a great tattered blaze of light to itself with its misshapen forelimbs, suck it dry, kill the light. The other hralcins moved in for the rest, tore at the light, fed, consumed it, darkness fell—
'SUNSPAAAAAARK!'
The hralcins howled like the Shadow's hounds, and moved in again. And through the howling, Herewiss heard Freelorn scream.
The scream entered into Herewiss and burned behind his eyes, ran through his veins in a storm of fire and filled him as the drug had filled him with himself. He needed his Name. There was no time any more. He threw the door open, and looked. Time froze in him. No, he froze it—
All his life he had thought of time as being flat.. like a plane. It was the world that was three-dimensional. A moment had seemed to have an edge sharp enough to slice a finger on, and by the time he summoned up the self-awareness and desire to try balancing on such a razor's edge, the moment was past already, and he was teetering on the next one.
Now, though, he found himself poised there, effortlessly, in the exact middle of a moment. And since he was truly still for the first time in his life, he perceived his Name. He looked sideways down it, or along it, or into it -there were no words to properly express the spatial relationships implicit within its structure. Its strands stretched outward forever, and inward forever, flung out to eternity and yet curling back and meeting themselves again, making a whole. A scintillating, dazzling latticework of moments past and moments future, of Herewiss-that-was and Herewiss-that-would-be, all entwined, all coexisting; a timeweb, a selfweb, himself at its heart.
He looked up and down its length, and saw. Down there, root and heart and anchor-point of the weave, the night of his conception. Elinadren his mother, and Hearn his father, tangled sweetly together in the act of love. After some time of sleeping together for the sheer fun of the sharing, they were making an amazing discovery; that each of them was finding the other's delight more joyous than his or her own — and not just while in bed. The long comfortable friendship of the Lord's son and the Rod-mistress who worked with him had come to fruition; they had become lovers; and now that they were in love indeed, their Names were beginning to match in places. He could see the two brilliant Name-weaves tangling through one another, and where they touched and met and melded, they blazed white-hot with joy. It was as if someone had cast out a net of silver and drawn in a catch of stars. Herewiss's soul, existing in timelessness, saw that bright network and was entranced by it; the joystars were beacons that drew him in. He wanted that kind of joy, of love, wanted to be part of it, to share the joy with someone else that way. And as he watched, Elinadren exploded in ecstatic fulfillment, and her Fire ran searing through the glittering weave, igniting the joystars into unbearable blinding brilliance, setting free for a bare few moments the spark of Hearn's suppressed Flame, which swept down like wildfire to meet hers. Their two commingled souls burned starblue, and Herewiss, overwhelmed by an ecstasy of light and promised joy, dove inward and blazed into oneness with them as they were one; started to be born again . . .